CLASH Collective Blog

By m(A)tt

The other night I had one of my usual bouts of insomnia. If you know me, you know there are two things I love. Cheese, and sleeping. Sometimes, I do so much of it, my sleep cycle gets all effed up, and I can’t fall asleep when I need to. Wednesday night was one of these nights. So after a futile 45-minute attempt at sleeping, I got up and dug in for a good night’s worth of internet time. Yes, that’s a shitty solution to insomnia, but it’s an addiction. One thing at a time.

My mind wanders a lot, and fortunately there’s such a thing as wikipedia. It allows me to enter in just about any topic that isn’t utterly fringe, and get at least a cursory understanding, and oftentimes an in-depth one. So, one thing I was wondering was what exactly insomnia is. As it turns out, it’s a few things. It’s a symptom, which can be caused by any number of problems, and it’s also a psychophysiological disorder where you’re completely unable to sleep, or sleep well. I sleep very, very well once I get to sleep, assuming I have the time.

Anyways, the important thing is I came across this:

Delayed sleep-phase syndrome (DSPS) is a chronic disorder of sleep timing. People with DSPS tend to fall asleep at very late times, and also have difficulty waking up in time for school or work which begins in the morning.

Reeeeeaaaaallllly…

I read on. Consistently late bedtimes, or even increasingly late bedtimes, despite actual physical or mental exhaustion, causing a consistent difficulty in a person’s work and/or school. Get this, sometimes the body clock actually becomes convinced that there are in fact more than 24 hours in a day. I get that sometimes, but usually when I don’t do jack shit all day for consecutive days.
DSPS is a disorder of the body’s timing system - the biological clock. It is believed to be caused by a reduced ability to reset the body’s daily sleep/wake clock. Individuals with DSPS might have an unusually long circadian cycle, or might have a reduced response to the re-setting effect of light on the body clock.

…

People with DSPS show delays in other circadian markers, such as melatonin- secretion and the core body temperature minimum, that correspond to the delay in the sleep/wake cycle. Sleepiness, spontaneous awakening, and these internal markers are all delayed by the same number of hours. Non-dipping blood pressure patterns are also associated with DSPS when present in conjunction with socially unacceptable sleeping and waking times.

So, the jist of it is that if you’re a night owl, or in the language of the wikipedia entry, an “extreme night owl,” over time you run the risk of fucking up your body chemistry’s daily pattern. So things like the timing of your blood pressure’s rising and falling, melatonin levels, and all sorts of biological clock-related things get all out of whack. This would explain why, when I am very tired sometimes, my head just pounds with blood, even when I’m not stressed. Ah, but here’s the kicker:

DSPS usually develops in early childhood or adolescence^[1], and sometimes disappears in adolescence or early adulthood. It is usually treatable, but cannot be cured.

Now let’s see here, where was I during my adolescence? What were my sleep habits like? OH YEAH! That mind-crushing death factory known as compulsary education; middle and high school. When you’re a teenager, it is in fact not possible for many to sleep before around midnight. I read it somewhere. But c’mon, you know it’s true. And then, when in fact you need around 10 or 12 hours of sleep as an adolescent, they pull you out of REM sleep and stick you in a room with your peers, where you compete for a future, by trying to pay attention to some old windbag using archaic models of “education”/indoctrination and discipline, developed to destroy immigrant cultures and mold us into obedient workers and soldiers. I didn’t sleep well during my school years, and have not since. I try not to think about those years. I usually end up punching a wall, and my fist doesn’t like that. It’s best to move on.

And of course, DSPS can’t be cured; only treated. Compulsary ed is the gift that just keeps on giving, you bunch of fucking Eichmanns. No, not all teachers are Nazi-esque. But the thing about fascism is that not everybody has to be a Nazi in order for terror to reign. All that evil requires is the silence of good people. This is one reason I have trouble supporting teachers’ unions. Not against it though.

But I digress. Work is dicking me around with my schedule. I start school Monday, so if this shit isn’t squared away soon, I’m just going to quit. All I need is a part time gig. Can’t be that hard to find, right?